Biblical reasons to quit saying the earth is 6000 years old

The creation account outlines 6 creative days. Each of the days has a starting point. If you start with day 6 and move backwards, you see that each day starts with "and God said" and ends with morning and evening. Work your way back to day and you find it starts in verse 3. Verses 1 and 2 occur before the 6 creative days. The table below outlines when each day starts and stops

Days of creation

Day

Starts in

End in

Day 1

v3

v5

Day 2

v6

v8

Day 3

v9

v13

Day 4

v14

v19

Day 5

v20

v23

Day 6

v24

v31

Day 7

2:1

in progress

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1

That means that God created before the first creative day. Heaven and earth is a merism. It does mean mean that these two things were created and should be enumerated. It is referring to those plus everything in between. I.e. In the beginning God created everything.

Now the earth was without shape and empty,...

Verse two skips the rest of the universe because it is not the focus of the creation account and goes straight to earth. At this point the earth was without shape and was empty. The days start at verse 3 in response to this situation.

Conclusion. Six creative days are geocentric in purpose. They do not account for all time. From the Bible, we have no business concluding the amount of time prior to the first creative day.

We have every grammatical indication that these days should not be viewed as literal 24 hour days. It is true that yom is usually used to indicate a literal day but that is only because a day is the most common use of the word. The day of the Lord is certainly not a specific day.

First, Gen 2:4 is as close to literary context as you can get and it uses yom to refer to the entire period of creation. I included the Hebrew and literal translation below.

Some would argue that the morning and evening must mean that specific days are under discussion. However, Psalms 90:4-6 uses the idea of the morning and evening of a day to indicate the life span of people.

in your eyes a thousand years
are like yesterday that quickly passes,
or like one of the divisions of the nighttime.
You bring their lives to an end and they “fall asleep.”
In the morning they are like the grass that sprouts up;
in the morning it glistens and sprouts up;
at evening time it withers and dries up.
Psalms 90:4-6

You can tell from the above chart that the seventh day does not have the same markers. No morning and evening, no ending. This is because the seventh day is still in proress according to Hebres 4:4-6

For he has spoken somewhere about the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works,” but to repeat the text cited earlier: “They will never enter my rest!” Therefore it remains for some to enter it, yet those to whom it was previously proclaimed did not enter because of disobedience.
Hebrews 4:4-6

It remains for some to enter it. It is referring to what? The sabbath rest of the seventh day. They cannot enter it if it is a literal day that occurred 6000 years ago.

It is misleading to pretend that all uses of the word for day are the same. Days 1 through 5 do not have definite articles. I.e. It does not say THE first day, THE second day, THE third day. It says A first day, A second day, A third day. The sixth day is the only day with a definite article. The significance of this can be demonstrated in plain english. If I say THE day before last wednesday then you know I am referring to last tuesday. If I say A day before last wednesday then you know I am being ambiguous about which day I am referring to. If I say this referring to separate days then you do not know even know if the days are in order.

Why would the author be ambiguous? To keep you from drawing conclusions based on an enumeration of literal days and missing the real importance of the text.

Remember continually his covenantal decree,
the promise he made to a thousand generations -
1 Chronicles 16:15

This verse says that God has made (past tense) a promise to a thousand generations. A thousand generations at 25 to 40 years old is 25,000 to 40,000 years.

When you read a genealogy, it is important to understand the intent under which it is written. If the author is trying to provide highlights of individuals which gaps on generations that are not noteworthy and you are trying to use it to figure out how old the earth is then the error is yours. A chronicle of Kings may be a place to expect a detailed list. An account of men of renown into antiquity will likely have gaps. If I ask you for American Presidents of note then you should not conclude that the United States is only 20 years old because I only listed the four on the Washington monument.

The Bible should not be used to determine how old the earth may be. The 31 verses of creation simply are not intended for that and do not provide the information you need. At the same time, there are compelling biblical reasons to conclude that Adam is at least 40,000 years ago and that we cannot determine how old the earth is prior to the first day of creation.

Many theories of creation exist:

day-age theory where each represents an unknown period of time

gap theory where an unknown amount of time exists between Gen 1:2 and 3.

day-age-gap theory where each day is a literal 24 hour day but unknown period of time exists between each.

When you de-convert because the earth is not 6000 years old, then you do so because of what you said, not because of what God.